Inside Story for Friday 5th of December 2025
Kim Sun is associate director of the 1000 Missionary Movement, whose headquarters in Silang, Philippines, were constructed with the help of a 1996 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering. Read more next week.
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Image © Pacific Press
For four years, Kim Sun argued with his parents about the Bible every time he came home to South Korea on vacation from his theology studies at the Adventist University of the Philippines. After graduating, he kept touting Adventist doctrines as he studied for a master’s degree in theology in South Korea. The arguments grew so intense that his parents’ church organized a prayer vigil for his parents, who served as a church deacon and deaconess. About 100 people prayed that the parents wouldn’t be swayed into leaving their church. Finally, Mother asked Sun to stop discussing the Bible.
Sun was dismayed until he heard a preacher say that God has an individual plan for each person. He realized that his plan for his parents might not be God’s plan. He decided to pray and trust God’s timing. He didn’t talk to his parents about the Bible for two years.
In the meanwhile, Sun completed his master’s and got a job with the church. He dreamed of becoming a pastor, but he didn’t receive a job offer.
As time passed, Mother began to wonder if her own beliefs were blocking her son’s dreams. She overheard someone ask Sun if his parents were Adventist, and he replied that they belonged to another denomination. She asked Sun directly, “Would it be helpful to you if we joined your church?”
Sun understood that his parents were worried about his future, but he didn’t want them to become Adventists for his sake. “It wouldn’t be helpful,” he said. “You need to study the Bible for yourselves and then decide.”
Sun introduced his parents to a pastor in their area, and they started Bible studies. None of Sun’s Bible arguments had convinced them over five years. But as they studied the Bible, they saw Jesus’ love in truths that they hadn’t noticed previously. After two months, they joined the Adventist Church.
Sun was so happy! He was the first Adventist in his family, and now his parents had joined him. He remembered the joy that he had experienced several years earlier when a man’s life was changed after he introduced him to Jesus in the Philippines. He remembered his desire at the time to become a full-time missionary.
Sun decided to return to the Philippines as a missionary with the 1000 Missionary Movement, an organization that is part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Southern Asia-Pacific Division.
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